How well do retail marketing campaigns perform in the Dutch landscape? 

To answer this question, we analyzed five leading marketing campaigns in the Dutch retail market, tracked the performance against competitors, measured the impact over time, and analyzed the flow of visitors between stores. This article was created using our location dataset and it illustrates the functionalities of Accurat’s platform for retail executives. For more information on our products, contact us through the website or book a demo of our software.

Scope of the Analysis

Campaigns by five different retailers were analyzed from mid 2023 to mid 2024. Various market segments were included in the analysis, with campaigns differing in length and premise. In this article, we also delve deeper into the results of PLUS' Euro Weeks and the discounter segment. The Dutch retailers and the respective campaigns we analyzed were:

Do marketing campaigns still drive visits in The Netherlands?

The answer is a resounding yes. When analyzing the results in terms of visit share, the retailers that did a marketing campaign clearly improved their visit metrics compared to the reference period. These results were especially apparent during the campaign period with nearly 10% growth in visits, but also lasted well into the post-campaign period with 4% remaining growth, compared to the reference period.

When calculating these metrics, the reference period is a historically comparable timeframe before the campaign that is also equally long. As is the case in this analysis, it’s often the period right before the campaign. The same goes for the post campaign, albeit after the campaign. For reference: the average brand that held no marketing campaigns in the analyzed periods did not have any significant change in its visit count.

Which campaigns were most impactful?

The big winner among all five marketing campaigns was PLUS, with a staggering relative growth in visit share of 42% during the Euro Weeks campaign. This percentage is in relation to the retailer’s own visit share during the reference period or 100%. Lidl and Vomar also had very successful campaigns in terms of visits with the Spaaractie Safari and Birthday Brochure ensuring 9 and 8% growth of visit share respectively.

Less successful was Albert Heijn, who slightly lost visit share during their Hamsterweken campaign at the end of May. Finally, Jumbo lost a small share during their campaign about ending promos on meat but already partially recovered in their post campaign period. In the end they recovered quite well from the decision to cut meat promos.

Discounters and discount campaigns did better in general, with PLUS offering very competitive pricing during their campaign, and Lidl being part of the discounter segment.

 

PLUS Euroweken promo campaigns

The big winner of all promo campaigns was PLUS with their Euro Weeks. They managed to attain the highest growth of visit share in the Dutch market. Most of their visits were won from the market leader, Albert Heijn, followed shortly by Jumbo and Lidl.

PLUS’ Euroweken is historically a very successful marketing campaign. The campaign drew 10% of its additional visit share from its competitor Albert Heijn. However, 25% of the additional visit share were attributed to extra visits to the market, or what we call a positive market shift. It's interesting to note that Alberty Heijn is the biggest player in the market, and because of that has most visitors to lose. However, even if we look at the normalized visit transfer per shop in the supermarket chain, Albert Heijn still loses the most visitors to PLUS.

The Pull of the Discount Campaign

Albert Heijn's Hamsterweken, Vomar's Verjaardagsfolder and PLUS' Euroweken all focus on price. When aggregating these campaigns to see how the discount campaigns performed, we primarily see an increase in the share of occasional visitors. This increase comes from a segment called non-loyals, or people that previously did not visit the campaigning stores. This illustrates that these discount campaigns serve to increase visits in the short run, but have no significant merit in increasing loyalty from the existing customers. This in turn demonstrates a high price elasticity on the demand side of the discounter segment. 

Conclusion

We can conclude that the most successful campaigns in drawing more visits were the campaigns of discounters, or discounting campaigns in other segments. These campaigns are effective at drawing deal hunters away from other discounters that are situated in the non-loyals and occasionals segments, but fall short in terms of creating loyalty. Another takeaway is that many of the campaigns were consistently drawing away visits from Albert Heijn, which as discussed could be due to the size of this giant.

A final conclusion is that all these insights and more were created inside our dashboard for retail executives. Are you interested in trying out the software, be sure to reach out or book a demo on our website.

About Accurat

Accurat is a Belgian start-up that uses location data to generate market insights for the retail sector. Our platform combines location information about your chain, your customers, and your competitors into an overview of the market. Some of our metrics include visits, loyalty, customer profiling, competitor benchmarking, dwell-time. Find out more on accurat.ai.